SoundTrack Pro 3 - Exporting Stereo .caf files?

Chadfish

Chadfish

Veteran
HI So I've been playing with the new music files that came with the latest FCP version, used for SoundTrack Pro. All the new ones are .caf files, which is somewhat of a drag because I can't just drag them into FCP, or Cubase 5. So I put them in STP and export as a wav. But the file comes out as 6 tracks. In Cubase they act as one, in FCP they are 6 individual tracks. I can't see any place in STP to choose a stereo file under the export menu.

What am I missing? There must be a way to go from 5.1 to Stereo files?

Thanks.

Chad
 
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Well, you should be able to drop CAF files directly into FCP (CAF= Core Audio File). STP always works in 5.1 under the hood, I wont go there but ARRRRGGGGGG. I do believe there is a way to export as stereo, isn't in the export options? I don't have STP3 so it might have changed but you at least could export stereo in STP2 I'm 99% certain. In FCP you can of course just throw away the unused tracks. Highlight and unlink. Select what you want to go away and delete then re-link what's left.
 
If you drag the .caf into a multitrack project you can right click on the file and select which channels to play, including individual channels as mono or stereo. Or you can downmix a 5.1 project down to stereo by making sure the output bus is set to stereo and export the project to WAV or AIFF.
 
The thing is that when I drag a .caf into FCP, it comes up as 5 individual mono files on separate tracks. Cools I have just tried right clicking on the file in STP, and changing it to stereo, but it still exports as a file that comes up in FCP as 5 mono tracks. I can't see where I set the output bus to stereo. Can you help me out there?

Thanks.
 
I don't have STP on this computer, but here's an image I found online. See the drop down with the numbers "1, 2" under Outputs > Out 1? I'm assuming that you are using a multitrack project.

I'll be on my work computer tomorrow so could double check this stuff in case you are still have problems.

EDIT: Oops, it's supposed to be the Submix, not Outputs tracks. Click on the "1-6" (or whatever else it says for you) field under the M(ute) and S(olo) buttons and select Stereo > 1, 2.
 
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I still can't get a straight stereo file out of STP when the file I put in a track is a 5.1 .caf. The file opens up in STP as one file. And after I export the file, I can open it in one track in Cubase, but in FCP it imports/drags in as 6 individual mono tracks. I know I could export out of FCP as a stereo, but that's 2 exports and some wrangling just to get a simple stereo file.

Anyone?
 
Open a new multitrack project. Drag the 5.1 .caf into one of the tracks in the the multitrack project. Make sure the track is routed to Submix 1 (it should be the default). Below, under the Submixes section, for Submix 1, click on where it says "1-6" and change it to Stereo > "1, 2". Go to File > Export. In the dialog make sure Exported Items is set to Master Mix, File Type is set to AIFF or WAV, create multiple mono files is NOT checked.

That should give you a single stereo file that will import as one file in FCP (I just tried it with one of the .caf 5.1 files that comes with STP version 3).
 
Yeah, what Cools said, if you look some of the STP sound library files come in 6 channel or 2 channel versions, exporting AIFF of a 6 channel version gives you a messed up surround AIFF that has a different track order of Left/Center/Right vs Left/Right/Center which is backwards from or vice versa so just open the file and rip out the L/R stereo pair, just don't end up with Left/Center or Right/Center pairs, or just rip out the center channel.

I think Protools 8.0.3 now supports CAF or at-least Apple Loops - with their site demolished by AVID I cannot say for sure right now, I don't know about Cubase/Nuendo.
 
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Thanks guys, that worked. I don't know why they default to 5.1 mixing.

Cubase can't import .CAF either. I just tried. It can import a 5.1 mix file from STP.
 
DJD..., STP uses the EBU track routing of LRCLsRsLfe. THe upside is that if you play it back on something that only suports stereo you get LR. The US FILM standard layout is LCRLsRsLfe. Pro Tools only uses the film layout which also sucks when you need the EBU (not often here but every once in a while...).

Chadfish, STP ALWAYS works in 5.1. Even when your working on a stereo project (or mono) it treats everything as a 6 track file with info on only one or two tracks. Someone decided, I would guess, that 5.1 is what everyone wants so why waste time with anything else. All of this (post) software makes assumptions and some are kind of stupid. We could go into it but the list on each would run pages long so lets not and say we did ;~)
Bottom line is if you don't want to work in 5.1 then you have to do some dancing to get STP to play well with you. Pretty much the opposite assumption from every other DAW out there.
 
That is lame Noiz!

I understand that about every big movie is 5.1, but I have yet to have a client ask for 5.1 on anything. Thank god because I don't have the speakers for 5.1! I bet 90% of projects done on FCP/STP are stereo. I've mixed 4 indi films and they were all stereo. I mean, just have a frickin' template for 5.1 when you want it.

Whatever...
 
Don't shoot the messenger. If you have read many of my posts you know I am not a fan of 5.1 on small budgets. If your not mixing on a stage (or doing a game) you shouldn't be trying to mix in 5.1.

So I agree it's lame, just don't attach my name to it.

It's also lame that the only track layout for 5.1 is NOT the track layout used in the US for films....
If your working a bunch in STP you should also know that the .stap "files" that STP creates are not files but packages, and they can get HUGE. Say you have an hour long clip of HD footage in FCP. You were lazy and just captured the whole thing and chopped it into clips but the clips just reference the original file. You have chopped your film down to a nice tight 1 min seq. Do a send to STP so you can do some polishing. In STP there is this one little bit that you use somewhere else so you save it as a stap "file". Cool, now go and send that file to someone... WhOOOO it's huge. In fact its just a bit larger than that one hour master clip of HD video!??? If you open the "file" (show package contents) you will find a copy of the clip and a reference movie and other misc files that are rendered versions of every effect/ filter etc you ever applied to the clip. STAP stands for Sound Track Audio Project and it's really an encapsulated STP project not a sound file. As long as you stay on the same machine and do the "faster" (reference movie) version of send to STP you'll probably never notice. But if you try to move that STP project to another machine...
THe way around it is to export things as AIFF or WAV files.

Qualification... This may have changed somewhat in STP3, though from talking to people who are using it, it seems like it hasn't. But I can't say for sure since I haven't used it yet.
 
Noiz I in no way meant to suggest you were being lame! Just expressing my exasperation...

And I don't use STP, except when I'm working on a project that needs background music. I open STP, and preview the sounds. I find one I like. Previously, when everything was an aif file, I would just do a "Reveal in Finder" then copy the file to my projects audio folder, then place the copy in the project. Upon upgrading to the latest FCStudio suite I found I had to drop these new caf files into STP, the make a mixdown. I use Cubase 5 for my audio post. So I'm used to exporting aiff files, then mixing in Cubase. I love Cubase/Nuendo, though I know the industry is addicted to ProTools. Anyway, it's a drag to have to do the extra steps just to get a frickin' stereo file.

Cheers.
 
Actually FCS2 was where the move to CAF files happened. I may actually load some of the content in to my library since Soundminer now reads CAF.

I think the industry is not so much addicted as paranoid of making a big investment in something that might not be so interested in their needs. You have to remember that Pro Tools et all were bleeding edge (for the film industry) up to the mid 90's. The biggest player then was a Windows app (proprietary box) called WaveFrame. In 97 WaveFrame was still running Windows 3.1! Those systems came in at a bit over $30K. THen there was Sonic Solutions. Again a $$$$$ box that also went away. Digi has been stable (as a company if not always as a developer) and they don't look like they are going anywhere. The "industry" lost millions on various DAW's that didn't last and it's not just the $, it's also the time to get a bunch of editors who can use the thing and tech's to support it. Nuendo is hanging in there and who knows they might start looking like a good deal to some studio and then they are in. Apple I think has the problem in that they (as a corporation) don't really car about the FCS. Not that Pro Apps and all of the people putting it together are not 100% but the bottom line for Apple is that they only sell FCS to sell CPU's. They could loose interest. THey have sold off other cornerstone apps with mixed results so if I'm Mr. BIG studio I'm not going to take the chance and invest a bundle on switching to FCP when I have a history with a company who does nothing but this app I'm using. If Digi stopped selling PT (Or Avid stopped selling Avid systems) they would be closed, if Apple stopped selling FCS they would... lay off a bunch of people, put out some good spin and go their merry way. I don't see the "industry" moving away from PT anytime soon because I don't see any other company they have so much power over. True music is a bigger hunk of Digi's pie but who else uses Avid. Not too many home users. Cold Mountain gets held out as one of FCP's shining moments but if you read the book on that production Apple was doing everything they could to make it not happen. That is exactly the kind of behavior that has made Hollywood keep FCP at arms reach. Avid may be a pain but you can get support, and they NEED you to be happy. Walter and company had to go through all kinds of workarounds to do things that Apple had already fixed, but wouldn't tell them let along offer a beta. The industry is used to service, the faster the better. I was on a show with a new console that was having some issues (it hadn't been designed for film mixing and they made some wrong guesses). A pair of programers were flown over from England and they would do software updates to fix things every night after the mix. We literally were getting live bug fixes and feature enhancements.

To your problem. You could probably set up a batch conversion in Compressor. So you work pretty much the way you did then drop the files into compressor and have it churn out the stereo versions.
 
I didn't notice the caf files coming up in STP until the latest version of Final Cut Studio. Previously every audio file I did a "reveal in finder" came up as an aiff. But you probably know better than I. And I'll try the Compressor method. I hadn't thought of that as an audio conversion tool. Thanks for the suggestion.

I sure hope FCP stays in the game. I don't know what "the industry" is doing as far as software for video. I live out in the sticks in Northern Humboldt California. We are trying to get some features made, and trying to get a flow going, but I only have so much money. Until just recently there wasn't even anybody with a boom pole, mixer, shotgun, hyper, wireless and a blimp to use. I got all that stuff, and now I'm everyone's friend. With film projects we have people using FCP and people using Premiere. No Avid. There are some guys with ProTools, but just individuals that use it for their bands. I used LE at my job at the marketing agency, but found it clunky to edit with. I loved Nuendo, but now I have Cubase 5 and find it pretty nice. It just seems like the main reason to use PT or Avid is so you can share projects with Hollywood people. I just don't know for sure.

So it's a bit daunting to think I need to change every bit of software and hardware (save for my 8 core Mac Pro) to get in the game with the big boys. But for the projects I do, the buck stops with me. I finish the work and don't pass it on, so I guess we don't need to have the industry standard just yet. At least I hope not.
 
According to your signature you have FCS2, that isn't the latest, the latest is FCS3 and yes the move to CAF was with FCS2.

There is the big boys and the BIG boys. A number of big films have been cut with FCP and some have had the sound edit done with PT Le. When you get into large crews and eight digits in the budget things get tighter.

Having cut with a few different DAW's I personally like PT quite a bit. But some of that is probably because I know it really well. And I'm slicing and dicing sound and not working with MIDI at all. I've heard that that the MIDI tools are a bit lacking. My last experience with Nuendo was with version 1.x so... But it's really hard to find any kind of objectivity with this stuff. I'm not objective. I don't have much interest in learning my way around another DAW since it's not what I need to work in. STP I had an opportunity to spend about five months only working on it so that one I think I have a better feel for. But Nuendo, Logic, Cubase ? What experience I have is minimal and probably way out of date. If I had a project that had me working in one that would be a different story. And the bottom line is if it works for what your doing it's fine. If you can export an OMF you can get your project to just about anyone upstream. I wouldn't want to try to cut a feature in STP but I know people who use it and like it (though they probably aren't cutting features in it). Most of the killers for me are little things like the number of tracks you can see at one time and that you can't make one track larger than the rest. Little UI things like that slow my work up too much. But they aren't big things and if your working with say 10-12 tracks they wouldn't be a big deal probably. I'm often working with 30 - 100 tracks and being able to move around and see a lot of tracks is very important. Most of the other "gotchas" you can work around. You can export an OMF from FCP and import it into STP so you are only dealing with sound files. You can set it up to export stereo so you don't have meaningless 5.1 files. You can put a sticky up to remind yourself that "filters" are really "plugins".

Also "industry" when I'm talking about it is Hollywood style films and national broadcast. But there is a much wider "industry" that includes all the Wedding video folks and local broadcast and industrials and small, smaller, and nano budget filmmakers. In that broader "industry" there isn't really a standard. FCP then gets a much bigger slice of the pie and another five or ten DAWs get healthy hunks of the market.

So I wouldn't worry till your offered $$$ to do a $$$ film and they want PT. But with all the $$$ are you really going to be worried? I had virtually stopped working on big budget films before I own a PT system. Post houses all have systems in their edit rooms and they don't want you using your own system so... It wasn't till I started doing a lot of indi's and ad's that I needed a system of my own.
 
I have "Final Cut Studio". I neglected to change my sig... Technically Apple didn't put a "3" in the name, so I've taken to calling it the "latest". I think 3 is coming, and "the latest" was just a teaser. There weren't many new features.

I guess it's what you're comfortable with. At least up here in Humboldt since there's nothing big going on other than self contained indi films and the usual cooperate/ads/seminar work. A lot of apps edit audio & video pretty good, but it's just a matter of the features you need, and what GUI you dig. Oh and its good to have a little bit of that green stuff too. (No I don't mean weed though I'm from Humboldt)
 
I've done what is suggested in this thread and I still get 6 tracks in my waves and aiff files when exporting. I've made sure to route the appropriate tracks through the submix and set the submix to stereo 1,2.
 
THen I'm not sure what is going on because when I do that I get stereo.

Try the question in the FCP section since there are probably folks who use STP more often there. And I know there are folks there who can ask the question at the right places in Apple.

If you find something that isn't in this thread please post it back here so others can find it.
 
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